Every Milwaukeean over a certain age remembers Albert the Alley Cat, the loquacious puppet who helped deliver the weather forecast on TV6, but who knew that the station now called TMJ-4 was America's first applicant for a commercial television broadcast license, all the way back in 1938? Or that TMJ-4 once occupied Channel 3?
Milwaukee Television History: The Analog Years(Marquette University Press) is packed with information on the development of TV in our city, from the earliest experiments with broadcasting pictures (1929, long before TV sets were on sale) through the latest developments in digital cable and HDTV. For many readers it may be too tightly packed. Author Dick Golembiewski taught mechanical engineering at MSOE, and the mechanics of television, along with every relevant FCC ruling and regulation, fascinates him. Although Milwaukee Television is not always elegantly written, Golembiewski's historical research is of the highest caliber.
Packed with photographs, Milwaukee Television is a pleasure to skim through, especially for long-term residents who recall the courtly demeanor of weatherman Bill Carlsen and sexy weathergirl Judy Marks, or the husband-and-wife team of Howard and Rosemary Gernette, hosts of "Dialing for Dollars." In the early years Milwaukee supported a variety of distinctly local productions, including bowling and polka programs, shows featuring hometown rock 'n' roll and children's storytellers. In his epilogue, Golembiewski wonders whether local programming, aside from news and weather, has much of a future in a media of convergence, where material from anywhere and nowhere is streaming 24/7.
The Milwaukee Road was our hometown railroad company and one name from the roster of the line's deluxe passenger trains, the Hiawatha, is carried on by Amtrak for its Milwaukee-Chicago route. Originally published by Kalmbach, Milwaukee Road Remembered has been reissued by the University of Minnesota Press. Author Jim Scribbins is knowledgeable about the technical end of railroading, timetables, locomotives and sleeper cars, as well as the service once available in dining cars, and works his material into an interesting account of an often-glamorous chapter in transportation. The Hiawatha remains one of Amtrak's most prosperous routes and the push toward greener transportation may yet revive many of the routes once taken by the Milwaukee Road.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
